Abandoned SAP changes, object overwrites, and uncontrolled parallel development are risks every SAP IT team works hard to avoid. After all, any one of these can disrupt critical business processes or even bring your production system to a halt.
Even a few minutes of unplanned downtime, can result in significant financial and operational impact. This is why the ability to manage SAP change across your landscape is crucial.
An automated SAP change management process enables you to deliver rapid, low-risk change, accelerates your S/4HANA migration, and supports agile and DevOps goals, without compromising stability or compliance.
There are 5 things to consider when selecting an automated SAP change management, and this is how Rev-Trac addresses each one.
1. Development and Configuration Resources
Every organization, regardless of size or industry, faces fluctuating numbers of – development and configuration resources from job to job, and project to project.
To maintain control, SAP change processes must be consistent and managed proactively across your landscape. All resources, in-house and consulting, must follow your change control requirements regardless of who makes the change.
An automated SAP change management tool like Rev-Trac helps enforce this consistency by:
- Capturing each business-driven change in a single Rev-Trac Request
- Progress requests through pre-defined approval and migration workflows, reducing errors and saving time
- Automatically migrating approved changes across the landscape to Production
- Allowing workers to define workflows by object, team, and urgency
- Supporting ABAP, Java, and non-SAP landscapes within the same platform
This ensures predictable, governed SAP change delivery even as teams and workloads change.
2. Documentation and audit readiness
Documenting and reporting SAP change can be a nightmare, particularly as compliance and audit requirements become more stringent.
With an automated SAP change process, all technical and functional changes are documented as part of the workflow.
Rev-Trac provides:
- Automated record keeping across the full change lifecycle
- Centralized attachment and referencing of documentation
- Full audit trails that meet even the strictest regulatory requirements
Rev-Trac also integrates with leading ITSM tools, including ServiceNow and Jira, extending ITSM approvals and workflows into the SAP technical layer.
3. Managing dual SAP landscapes (N/N+1)
Typically, SAP-using businesses operate dual SAP landscapes:
- An existing environment (N)
- A parallel project or upgrade environment (N+1)
Changes delivered to production often need to be retrofitted into the N + 1 track to avoid missing functionality or inconsistencies.
Rev-Trac includes features specifically developed for managing SAP change across multiple landscapes (N and N+1 etc.):
- All Rev-Trac requests migrated to Production are automatically cloned
- Developers can decide whether a retrofit is required
- Parallel development across landscapes is controlled to prevent missing functionality when a project goes live
This ensures stability across environments while supporting large projects such as an S/4HANA migration.
4. Parallel Object and Configuration Development
Large SAP initiatives are often delivered in phases. The same SAP object or configuration record may be part of several development phases planned for the future.
And you may need to start multiple phased development in the same systems. In this scenario, it can be a challenge to manage the parallel development across phases.
Without control, this can lead to:
- Object conflicts
- Sequencing errors
- Overwrites and rework
Rev-Trac addresses this through:
- Object locking to specific phase
- Prevention of unauthorized parallel development until the object has reached a configured status
- A Parallel Development Workbench where authorized users can approve or reject parallel development requests that contain the same object
- Automated notifications to all affected users
5. Change volume and automated SAP change
As SAP landscapes grow in complexity, the volume of SAP changes to track and manage is rapidly rising. With higher volume comes increased risk of:
- Transport sequencing errors
- Dependency conflicts
- Inconsistent releases
Automated SAP change is crucial to managing the large volume of changes.
Rev-Trac’s Release Management Workbench (RMWB) ensures an organization’s requirements are stuck to consistently.
The RMWB gives a simple drag and drop view of changes included in each release, providing insight into the consequences of moving individual changes to Production within a chosen release.
The Rev-Trac change requests manage the initial development and testing for business requirements, marking them ‘Ready for Deployment’ when the build and test phases for the change is complete.
Using the RMWB, an authorized Release Manager or CAB member can drag and drop changes into a release.
The release will automatically sequence the transports from all associated changes to account for release sequence and dependencies.
Releases can be scheduled daily, weekly, monthly, and even on an ad-hoc basis for larger projects.
The release will automatically sequence the transports from all associated changes to account for release sequence and dependencies.
Releases can be scheduled daily, weekly, monthly, and even on an ad-hoc basis for larger projects.
What’s next?
Are you considering automated SAP change management? Or, have you automated SAP change processes but aren’t seeing the expected results?
Contact one of our SAP change management experts to see how Rev-Trac helps organizations:
- Reduce SAP production risk
- eliver rapid, low-risk SAP change
- Accelerate S/4HANA migration
- Achieve measurable ROI on your SAP investments
